I've got an Inspiron 8600 with the widescreen that I've had for a little over two years now. It is still running strong even though it travels everywhere with me. I have also looked at the Toughbooks and basically you could buy 2 Dells for the equivalent Toughbook. I program AMX, Lutron, LiteTouch, Vantage, HAI, Panasonic phone/voicemail sytems, set up networks.... so basically my Dell is constantly out at job sites being punished by construction dust and so on... The Dells are being sent out with more and more programs on them but it is pretty easy to get rid of the fat. Just make sure that if you need office or visio or anything else, see if they have a deal on it from Dell, I learned the hard way that I probably could have paid half of what I did if only I had just bought it as a packaged bundle with the laptop instead of later on separately down the road.